"Paper Mario: Sticker Star started development at the end of 2009. The development team thought Paper Mario was a good fit for the 3DS and initially developed it as a RPG making use of the 3DS's stereoscopic display. After E3 2010, a demo of this build was previewed to Shigeru Miyamoto, who was reportedly unimpressed, dismissing it as "just a port of the GC version".

​Miyamoto requested the development team to "make a big change". Said development team was mostly composed of developers new to Paper Mario (planning and design staff being "about 90%" new, according to Kenji Nakajima"), with a few veterans brought in to help with the usage of old assets. Naohiko Aoyama, who conceived the original Paper Mario's visual direction but had little involvement with its sequels, was brought in as the director. "